Look Out, Jamestown! Hampton's 400 Nears

HAMPTON — This year, Hampton warms up for its quadricentennial in 2010.

They had just given up on Cape Henry after they found that people there didn't want to be neighbors.

So the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery sailed for the other side of Hampton Roads and found a fairer shore, "where these Sauages swam ouer with their Bowes and Arrowes in their mouthes," writes George Percy.

FOR THE RECORD - Published correction ran Wednesday, May 2, 2007.A story about Hampton's 400th birthday in Saturday's Local section misspelled the name of Pochins, the Kecoughtan chief who was the half-brother of Pocahontas. (Text corrected.)

That beat Cape Henry, where the bows shot arrows at members of the Virginia Company.

John Smith had an even better handle on the new territory: "... an ample and faire Country indeed ... wholsome and fruictfull."

Had the colonists stayed where they landed on April 30, 1607, first at Old Point Comfort, then where today's VA Medical Center is located, Hampton 400 would be celebrated this weekend. Instead, the English headed up the James River, finally setting up on mosquito-infested, malarial, swamp-ridden Jamestown.

The celebration of that voyage from Hampton is this weekend's "Journey Up the James." That "journey" is why the city is touting "Explore Hampton 2007, Sailing Into 2010 & Beyond" this year as an adjunct to Jamestown 400.

In many ways, Hampton is using Jamestown 400 to warm up for its own 400th anniversary, in 2010.

It's been hard to do anything surrounding Jamestown 400 without having Hampton literature thrust into your hands.

"We're taking every opportunity," said Mary Fugere, of the city's Convention and Visitor Bureau. "In our mind, this calendar of events ... these are all celebrations of Hampton's heritage. ...We plan to have a presence at all of these opportunities."

If some events -- speeches by Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln re-enactors -- seem far removed from the settling of Virginia, they draw crowds available to receive the news that Hampton is ready to be explored this year and to celebrate a birthday in 2010.

The celebration comes closer to home today, when the Godspeed sails past a newly unfurled giant flag at Fort Wool, and Sunday, when the annual Landing Day Ceremony and Re-enactment is performed.

"I'm excited," said Erin McMahon, who has been hired by the city to oversee these events and to sell sponsorships over the next three years until Hampton's July 9, 2010, birthday celebration. "This event, Journey Up the James, seems more like the kickoff for Explore Hampton, Sailing Into 2010 & Beyond."

After the weekend, the boats will head upriver, as they did 400 years ago.

Mike Cobb, curator of the city's History Museum, said the Jamestown settlers should have stayed in Hampton, a more welcoming place, one where the Kecoughtan Indians were curious and friendly.

"But," Cobb added, "their orders were not to settle on a coast line because of the Spanish."

Spanish marauders tended to attack anyone near an ocean, so the people of the Virginia Company were told by investors in London to sail 100 miles inland.

They decided 30 miles was enough when they got to Jamestown, where misery awaited.

Next week, Hampton representatives will follow the boats upriver with invitations to a birthday party three years from now.

It's why the city has $274,000 for the celebration in its 2007-08 budget, with more to come after that.

It's also why historically bent minds in Hampton are still looking for ways to promote 2010 festivities, and why the city is celebrating itself as "the oldest continually occupied English-speaking settlement in America."

Firsts will abound, to be discussed and argued:

* First American Christmas, 1609.

* First free schools.

* First entry point for the first African-Americans in the country.

All of their stories will be told with an eye on July 9, 2010 -- the 400th anniversary of the date an English complement of more than 100, led by Sir Thomas Gates, used guns to overwhelm a Kecoughtan settlement led by Pochins, Pocahontas' half-brother.